FRACTAL PARAMETERS OF SOIL PORE SURFACE AREA UNDER A DEVELOPING CROP

Abstract

Fractal parameters of soils has become increasingly important in understanding and quantifying transport and adsorption phenomena in soils. It is not known how soil plant development may affect fractal characteristics of soil pores. We estimated pore surface area fractal parameters from mercury porosimetry data on gray forest soil before and during crop development, in samples both containing and not containing soil carbohydrates known to be important structure-forming agents. Two distinct intervals with different fractal dimensions were found in the range of pore radii from 4 nm to 1 μm. This could be attributed to differences in mineral composition of soil particles of different sizes. The interval of the smallest radii had the highest average fractal dimension close to 3. Smaller surface area fractal dimensions corresponding to low surface irregularity were found in the next interval of radii. The plant development affected neither fractal dimensions nor the cutoff values of soil samples. The carbohydrate oxidation caused a significant increase in the fractal dimension in the interval of larger radii, but did not affect fractal dimension in the interval of small radii. The cutoff values decreased after carbohydrate oxidation.